


Stardust

by Nope



Category: Doctor Who
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-05-28
Updated: 2008-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:40:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25767574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nope/pseuds/Nope
Summary: The Doctor meets another traveller.





	Stardust

"Okay," the Doctor says. "See you around."

It feels cold in the TARDIS. It has for a while. He doesn't set the destination, just kicks the handbrake off and lets her drift in local temporal orbit. Up or down a few years, a few thousand miles. Sooner or later, there will be an alarm or the cloister bell will ring or something. He goes to bed, just stretches out on the covers with his clothes still on, shoes and leather jacket and stares up at the ceiling in the almost dark.

The TARDIS breathes around him. Slow in. Slow out. Slow in. He closes his eyes. Slow out. Something whispers in the air-vents. He is not alone in the room. He opens his eyes again. Lights drift like dustmotes, shimmer and dance. For a moment he think it's just an optical illusion, the way they seem to shape a face, that narcissistic tendency to anthropomorphize. Then she comes together and he knows it's real enough. Blonde hair. A smile. A... maid's outfit, apparently. Nice.

"Hello," he says, sitting up. "I'm the Doctor."

She smiles wider, comes apart in light and swirls back together, closer now. Almost sitting in his lap. She has no weight at all. A ghost. An echo. The shape of his name an affectionate curl of her lips. Her fingers feel like a summer breeze against his cheek.

"What are you doing, then?" he asks.

Travel forever, she says. No sound. He reads the words from her lips. We're ghosts, she says, and stardust. Travel forever.

"Yeah?" He nods. "I travel a bit, me. All the time." It's an old joke. Most jokes are. He thinks he might be an old joke himself now. He thinks about how long his hair was after he regenerated, how he cut it himself without a mirror, how big his ears are now he's finally gotten a good look at them. Her fingers are brushing against them. Tingling.

"That's a teleport suspension field," he says and then, realizing, "Ah." It's like that, is it?

She seems happy enough, though. Happy and close, leaning in. He reads the words from her lips - dreams of another sky. A whole universe teeming with life.

"And you get to see it all," he tells her.

An old tradition, she says, and he leans up to meet her. It's like kissing sunshine. Warm. Liquid. Gold.

"Fantastic," he breathes.

Show them how to fly, she tells him, smile bright and wide. Fly! And she's gone again into light, into the vents, swirling away through the TARDIS, one kiss and goodbye, goodbye; one kiss and she's breathed out into the universe. Stardust, forever.

Some time later, he goes back into the control room, flicks the fast return switch.

"By the way," he says, leaning out of the door and beaming at the other blonde. "Did I mention, it also travels in time?"


End file.
